Improvement Planning

Corporate Strategy 2025-30

Our Corporate Strategy sets out how we intend to deliver our key priorities over the short and medium term.  It is a five-year Strategy, agreed by Council, and is reviewed and refreshed periodically to take into account emerging issues and to respond to challenges as they arise. 

The Strategy is aligned with Cabinet’s Programme for Administration (approved in January 2023) which sets out the political aims and aspirations for the administrative term.

The Corporate Strategy is a key element in our ‘golden thread’ (see page 9 for more detail).  It provides the overarching framework for the development of detailed medium-term service plans, unit plans (where appropriate) and ultimately individual performance and well-being plans.  In doing so, the Council establishes a clear link between organisational strategic priorities and delivery, and supports and enhances an understanding of how everyone who works for the Council makes a vital contribution to the work of the organisation as a whole.

Under the Well-being of Future Generations Act, the Council is required to produce Well-being Objectives to demonstrate the contribution the Council will make towards the national well-being goals for Wales established by Welsh Government in the Act. 

Our Corporate Strategy is the vehicle through which the Council sets and expresses our Well-being Objectives.  These are important in the sense that they provide a framework for all the work that we do and set the direction for how the Council intends to make a difference in improving the well-being of the people and communities in Pembrokeshire.

What do we mean by Improvement?

Improvement, in the context in which we work, can mean many things. It can mean delivering better services or simply getting better as an organisation. For us a key driver is delivering improved outcomes for our customers and the community. Increasingly, however, local authority improvement will be about maintaining service delivery against a backdrop of diminishing financial resources. We will face some tough choices about what we seek to improve and how best to accomplish improvement in the future.

How do we know whether or not we are improving?

In order to determine whether or not we are actually delivering improvement we rely on a ‘balanced scorecard' of performance measures. This scorecard sounds complicated but is simply a collection of different types of measure, each of which relates to one or more of our improvement objectives. Some of the measures we use are set at a national level - we are required to report on statutory performance indicators - others are set locally. The measures we employ may concern the cost of particular actions, their quality (how well we do something or, in some instances, how much of something we do) and the impact that particular actions have on our customers and the community.

We are particularly concerned with this last type of measure. Though we do set targets in some areas, establishing whether or not improvements have actually been secured for our customers is far more important than partial measures of service quality.

The process for collating this information is agreed in advance at a senior level within the organisation. Data and evidence is then fed into a performance management system and monitored, on an ongoing basis, by managers and directors. The performance management system that we use allows us to tailor the information reviewed to different layers of management. All our staff are responsible for improving performance, but our senior managers, need to be able to review progress across the whole authority.

Corporate Peer Challenge February 2020

We undertook a Corporate Peer Challenge in order to drive the improvement of the Council in the future. 

The challenge team was led by the Local Government Association.  This team of peer officers and councillors, spent a week with the Council in mid-February 2020 and interviewed a wide range of councillors, employees and colleagues from other organisations. 

The team’s report (see below) provides constructive challenge and shares learning on improving how the Council is run.

The Council has committed to producing an action plan based on the report’s recommendations.

If you have any questions about the Corporate Peer Challenge, please contact: Dan Shaw, Corporate Planning Manager, 01437 775857 dan.shaw@pembrokeshire.gov.uk

When does improvement planning stop?

It doesn't. Improvement planning is an ongoing process; it is important that we constantly revisit and revise our plans in light of the changing circumstances in which we work. We also make continual adjustments to the way in which we go about improvement planning; different organisations use different approaches and wherever possible we try to learn from the approaches that have been adopted by other local authorities.

Improvement Review

The Welsh Government (WG) introduced a statutory duty under the Local Government (Wales) Measure 2009 to prepare an Annual 

The purpose of the Review is to show how we are meeting our plans to improve the way in which we deliver services to our customers.

If you wish to discuss any issues raised in this document then please contact:

Dan Shaw
Corporate Planning Manager
Tel: (01437) 775857
Email: policy@pembrokeshire.gov.uk